


the moon follows me home (i'm never alone)

by JunkerJackrabbit



Category: World of Warcraft
Genre: Alleria is a smol murder machine, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alpha/Omega, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Arson, Ash'alah needs a raise, Beware beware mini alpha of the sea, Biting, Can Tyrande put a ring on it?, Consensual Sex, Don't fuck with Windrunners, Drowning, F/F, Fourteen thousand year old elf yells at moon goddess more at eleven, How to destroy a forward camp in one day, Inappropriate behavior on a sabrecat, Lesbian Character, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Queen Alleria Windrunner, Ranger-General Sylvanas Windrunner, Smut, Stubborness abounds, Swearing, Terrible People, Tyrande yells at the sky
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-06
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-12 04:09:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29878878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JunkerJackrabbit/pseuds/JunkerJackrabbit
Summary: The Windrunner rangers are ruthless in an all-too-familiar forested terrain. Supply lines are put to the torch, patrols disappear, mountain passes close off by boulder-fall, and rivers burst from newly-loosed dams. It is a form of guerilla warfare that her kaldorei are suited to respond to, but they desperately need leverage to stem that tide before the whole of Lordaeron falls under Thalassian banners.She may have it, or may not depending on what she finds at the forward camp. Her nightsaber leaps over a fallen log and only just avoids the deadfall trap in the path, one of many they have encountered on the road. If this goes poorly...it is a war that will not end until the whole of Azeroth burns for Malfurion's (and Arthas's) sins.Or - Don't fuck with Alleria. Do fuck with Sylvanas? There is a very serious war. Tyrande cannot.
Relationships: Jaina Proudmoore/Alleria Windrunner, Liadrin/Valeera Sanguinar, Shandris Feathermoon/Velonara, Tyrande Whisperwind/Sylvanas Windrunner
Comments: 12
Kudos: 30





	the moon follows me home (i'm never alone)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rawrkie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rawrkie/gifts).



"We have a situation."

She did not even see Shandris duck beneath the flap of the war tent, so intent was she on the troops in formation upon the map before her. But she feels the gust of cool air and the bit of rain that it brings, colder still on the lilac curve of a toned bicep. Her adoptive daughter flicks an errant few droplets from gauntleted fingertips, circles around the table like a restless nightsaber to look over the parchment. It takes only an instant to find the piece, Shandris plucking a small, hand-carved feather from amidst the units and placing it between Skulk Rock and Seradane. 

That sole action speaks volumes. Has her attention, immediate and unwavering, the Queen of Darnassus looking up at the spirit of her spirit with eyes that harbour all the unbridled intensity of starfire, achromatic as the scattered hints of light in the twilight above. 

"Report," Tyrande commands with a resonant echo in her chest, ominous as the thunder that rolls overhead. It bleeds into the dark, cultured timbre of her voice, stains her words with frustration; as if expectant that the news borne so far is of cut supply lines, diverted troops, alliances fractured even further in the fortnight since they parted.

Shandris places a sympathetic hand on her forearm, the briefest touch, soon withdrawn as the other intones, "Camp Blackhelm." And the beta's pale eyes meet hers uncowed, brilliant with their own anger. "We must ride, or there shan't be one. The Shan'do's men have refused my command."

And at that, her ears shift back amidst tresses of dark spruce and tangled ivy, all but pinned to her skull. Her clawed nails curl ribbons of wood from the rough-hewn table before she rises to her full height, a full seven feet and some of Elune's will given kaldorei form. All power, all smooth muscle and a nightsaber's grace as she looms over Shandris to assert, "Your command is my command."

Shandris dips her head in acknowledgement, but does not avert her gaze, and that tells her everything that she needs to know. With a low snarl that she feels in her bones, a building fury, Tyrande reaches out for her war-glaive, secures her cuirass as she strides out of the tent - taking one stride for each of Feathermoon's three.

Loping beside her toward their sabercats, rain collecting on her pauldrons anew, Shandris elaborates, "They took Silvermoon captives; a Windrunner among them. From what I understand, there was an altercation after-" Those pallid eyes cut in her direction as the girl swings up onto the back of a cat, "Don't ask me how."

She had been about to do just that, narrows her eyes in thought as she pulls easily astride Ash'alah, the great cat emitting a low sound of welcome before it turns at her behest and slinks toward the pines. "And the current status in Blackhelm?"

"One of their little-" Shandris squints against the rain as they pick up pace, makes a motion toward her neck. "Amulets. It was broken. Fandral swears they're dosing with nightroyal, but it's making no difference. I think he's lying with the state of our forward guard. Speaking of. Here."

She will have a riot on her hands if a Windrunner alpha goes into rut in the midst of her forward camp, and it will not end until the quel'dorei or every one of hers with that designation are dead. Insurmountable odds. Even for a Windrunner.

Her hand jerks up as Shandris throws a damp pouch to her. It carries the distinctive, resinous scent of nightroyal. As fresh as possible. All dark foliage and small purple-blue blooms pressed into spheres. She presses two between her teeth and cheek. It will dampen the effect, should be sufficient to keep her from killing a Windrunner and doing irreparable damage to their attempt to pull this conflict back from the brink. Glances up toward the sky as if to discern any stars, and finding none through the clouds, asks simply, "How long?"

"Use that sparingly," Shandris advises bluntly, steering around a fallen oak and up the river-bed to lose any of the quel'dorei that may pick up their trail despite the weather. "The Sunfury hit the supply line near the border. We shan't have another shipment until E'llian returns from Darnassus, unless we can sneak one through the Arathi behind them."

She feels her hackles rise at that, a slip of teeth flashing in the dark as she looks sidelong toward her daughter, "And you did not begin with that?"

"An Windrunner omega in Blackhelm takes precedence," Shandris asserts, exhaling sharply, a breath of silver-white that belies the tension in the younger elf's frame. "I can do nothing about our supply line, but if you intend to negotiate with the Queen - you need to still have an omega to barter with, Minn'do."

And she trusts Shandris with her life, but what she wants to say is there are no Windrunner omegas. That Lireesa's children are known alpha to the last, every proud, vain, arrogant one of them. It is common knowledge. Knowledge she would never have cause to doubt, until this one hesitant moment.

"How long?" Tyrande inquires instead, wondering if this is yet another ploy. Another fox with its paw in the trap, only to reveal that the fox itself is the trap when the hunter moves to free it and it claims a limb. 

"Two days, almost eclipsing a third. Myllaen sent her alphas on to Seradane, and the remainder to ward where the prisoners are kept, but the Shan'do has refused the same of his circle. Everything within a league of Blackhelm is howling for blood," Shandris elaborates with a low displeasure, a tension to her sharp features that makes her look a hint older beneath the rain-dappled leaves. "We've had four skirmishes already. Three between our own men and another out of Jintha'alor."

"And what else aren't you telling me," Tyrande demands with a low displeasure, feeling the hidden truth like a sliver of ice beneath the surface. Her toes dip into the water when the cats ford the shallowest portion. It's cooler than it would be in Darnassus, despite the thin canopy and the sunlight it would have seen before the storm rolled in.

"Several things that you aren't going to like." Ah. And Shandris is ever her mother's child. Blunt as a cudgel where it's warranted. "First being that I armed her. The Vilebranch nearly breached the perimeter. It seemed prudent until we return, and she seems capable enough with a blade. Smart enough not to turn it on her protection. I suspect it will come in handy one way or the other."

"I thought you said I needed the omega alive," Tyrande snaps softly.

"I suspect you would rather tell Alleria that her sister is dead than the alternative," Shandris answers, and that is almost too blunt, but true. "Second, I spoke with Lewen upon my arrival. It is the position of the sentinels that the Shan'do destroyed it deliberately, not out of carelessness. It was of sturdy make, by all accounts."

"For what reason would he-" Tyrande cuts off in a low snarl of knowing. The implications are all there for her to see. Capture of a Windrunner is a boon, albeit one that settles as unnaturally as a slip-snare around her neck as if to break it. It buys them an audience, and an audience buys her the opportunity to right Lordaeron's...situation. "Enough. We must quicken pace."

All of this. All of her careful planning, all their season of guerilla war on the border of the Hinterlands, will fall apart if their Windrunner is not kept well, if the unwritten laws of keeping one's captives are broken. Her kaldorei are not brutes. They are good people, who would not so brazenly mistreat a prisoner. But law and instinct are known to war with one another, and against this enemy, it is no mis-step she can afford.

Particularly after what happened in Boralus.

Not with all the peculiarities of the quel'dorei containment method. For, intolerant to most herbal remedies and resistant to all but the most heavily enchanted means of suppression, their amulets are all and everything. They suppress. Mask the scent, the designation, quell the heat or the rut for so long as they remain on and intact.

Removed? Well. All that fire and instinct suppressed must go somewhere, and does. Swiftly. Like wildfire. She will be surprised, frankly, if their Thalassian guest has made it this duration without succumbing to her better nature, whether alpha or omega in truth. Particularly if Stormrage would not relinquish his druids to Seradane. And if the Windrunners only throw alphas, and Shandris has armed her? 

She rankles at the thought. But better a dozen dead druids than their last chance at peace dashed against the stones.

Alleria Windrunner did not secure the throne to Silvermoon with mercy. No. She took it in bloody retribution and with her mother's bow. She is of decisive action. Hard, her people have said, but fair. Beloved. The quel'dorei call her after Belore now. Their Lady Sun. 

And when Lordaeron's Prince threatened what was hers by claim? The whole of bloody Quel'Thalas had marched upon his borders, even with their Queen in Kul Tiras. They had put half of Eastweald to the torch and driven his loyalists back nearly to the Arathi, offering a simple choice to those who dwelt between: submit, perish, or stay out of their way. The last option evaporates the instant a Windrunner is injured, or worse - dies in her custody.

Tyrande herself knows only what she has heard word of mouth from the Alliance war council, summoned after whatever the fuck happened in Boralus. Rumours abound, chief amongst them that Arthas Menethil has lost his mind. She knows that he had written to the Lord Admiral Katherine Proudmoore concerning her daughter's hand, and received a response she could respect - that it was not the Lord Admiral's to offer. 

No one expected, really, that he would conspire otherwise. That he would enter Boralus not a fortnight later with a battalion of armed men, ally with the Ashvanes to cripple the ice-bound fleet, and lay siege to Proudmoore manor in the thick of the Winter's Veil celebrations. Only to find that Winter's Veil is not all that the city was celebrating, after all.

For no one loves the Daughter of the Sea like Kul Tiras; save for one. And in the late hours of the evening on the cusp of morn, up on her balcony and having by all accounts thoroughly warmed her bed after an eve of merry-making, the Lady Sun herself had descended to frigid Boralus. The best kept secret in Azeroth out in the light, celebrated with revelry by the people.

The Proudmoore house and Windrunner line to be joined, and, much to the delight of Katherine herself, the news that her first grandchildren were already on the way. By all accounts, Jaina was radiant with it, the Sea and the Sun a perfect match. Ironic, that Boralus saw such great joy on Winter Veil, and three eves later, Alleria Windrunner and the Proudmoore sons were having the surviving Menethil commanders drowned in the ice-broken harbour, burning the tradehouse down with the Ashvanes still in it.

Dawn had brought the worst of it, according to Tess, at least. For no one loved Lady Sun like Silvermoon, until she had Priscilla Ashvane keel-hauled on the Proudmoore flagship and brought the severed head back to the Lord Admiral like a promise. This is what will happen to those who would threaten what is mine, and what is hers. Now there isn't a Kul Tiran alive who wouldn't swear their service to a Thalassian Corsair, and Derek Proudmoore is leading the whole of the thrice-damned Silvermoon navy from Quel'Thalas. 

Now it's all gone to nightsaber shit in under a season, Tyrande corrects with a soft snarl, ducking beneath a branch as they ride on.

Terenas Menethil dead in his sleep on his son's retreat to Lordaeron City, the Mad Prince surviving to be crowned Mad King. Lor'themar Theron appointed Regent Lord of Quel'Thalas, and Alleria herself come down to the front lines to lead the Thalassian army herself.

It is beyond personal.

And it will not end until Arthas is dead, she suspects. Darnassus had been summoned to stem the surge of Thalassian soldiers into Alliance territory long enough for negotiations, a uniquely elven approach to a uniquely elven frontal assault. But Alleria has not responded to any runners, and she suspects this conflict will not end until Arthas Menethil's head has joined Priscilla Ashvanes on the pikes in Tirisgarde Sound.

Still - she has seen her share of human homesteads already on the travel northward, ravenously eating mana rolls and flying Silvermoon red-and-gold. Wonders how long Lordaeron has been this bad if Alleria has won them with bread.

The Windrunner rangers are ruthless in an all-too-familiar forested terrain. Supply lines are put to the torch, patrols disappear, mountain passes close off by boulder-fall, and rivers burst from newly-loosed dams. It is a form of guerilla warfare that her kaldorei are suited to respond to, but they desperately need leverage to stem that tide before the whole of Lordaeron falls under Thalassian banners.

She may have it, or may not depending on what she finds at the forward camp. Her nightsaber leaps over a fallen log and only just avoids the deadfall trap in the path, one of many they have encountered on the road. If this goes poorly...it is a war that will not end until the whole of Azeroth burns for Malfurion's sins.

By Tyrande's estimate, it takes them almost six hours to reach the forward camp, nestled between Skulk Rock and Seradane in the mountains beyond the river, which makes it more secure from farstrider attack than it isn't. And she knows how dangerous this is when she catches the scent on the cool evening air, even so far as the riverbank.

Because even with the nightroyal, her instincts are difficult to rein in, the primeval part of her that wants to hunt and claim. To find the soft place between the omega's shoulder and neck, drink it in like spiced wine. Cut her teeth there. Her ears flick back against her skull as they steer into the camp, and she wants more of it. Inhales slowly and allows it to live in her lungs, the scent of woodsmoke and fir, of leather and honeysuckle, wild as it is sweet.

It calls to her as it must call to every other alpha in the vicinity. And Elune help them if this is only two days. 

A low snarl escapes her chest as a nearby druid pricks his ears toward the cliffs, and it is all she can do not to bare teeth. Shandris must hear it, because her daughter's ears have shifted back subtly so, and she steers her nightsaber closer as if to keep them on the path. 

"Two days." Tyrande recites lowly, rich tones permeating her voice the nearer they draw the base of the sheer cliffs the camp rests against. Her thoughts are marked by the sudden realization that she should have taken more nightroyal.

"Almost three," Shandris corrects as they reach the appointed place, tethering their great cats to walk the remainder of the way. There is a cave at the base of the cliffs, and that will be where she finds her answers.

Three days is not unmanageable.

It seems to her that the whole of the kaldorei encampment stills at her approach, as it should, a wide berth granted as the furious alpha in their midst stalks toward the wary circle of sentinels in the distance, their hands on their war-glaives where Shandris left them half a day past. And Elune, every breath of cool, Lordaeron air is burning in her lungs, carries on it the siren scent of heat-stricken omega, which radiates like the warmth of the sun from beyond them. 

Gravel crunches underfoot with every stride, and her star-white eyes drink in the crimson flecks in it, the ones that speckle the edge of a war-glaive here and there. More than one kaldorei druid is licking their wounds at a sullen distance, soundly repelled from the source of all this trouble, only to scramble back further as their Queen approaches. It should not have come to this.

It should not have come to this. 

He should have sent them to Seradane as soon as he realized the gravity of his mistake. Should have had the sense to do what was necessary instead of allowing his error to broadcast the location of their captives to the whole of the Hinterlands. Shandris's words burn in the back of her skull: We've had four skirmishes already, three between our own men and another out of Jintha'alor.

And Elune bless Myllaen Staroak, for Shandris's Sentinel-Commander is as hardened as they come. At only six feet and some inches, she is slight for a kaldorei, but is nonetheless nose-to-nose with the Shan'do on their approach, as unmoved by his fervor as she would have been by any who attempted to breach the glaive-wall without Shandris's permission.

Unbridled ire races through her like lightning as Malfurion barks something at the shorter woman. And it is not all the omega hidden in this cave that causes a wave of raw aggression over her, but an unbridled fury at his insubordination, his manipulations, his sheer fucking disobedience in the face of her command. Shandris's word is her word. Whisperwind cannot even hear his over the rush of blood in her ears, its war-drum echo as they pin back against her skull and a rattled snarl tears itself from her throat.

He has only the time to turn, for his blue eyes to widen a fraction in fear, before she has him by the throat. Before he is slammed back into the lichen-spotted rocks with enough force to kill a lesser man, held there with a well-muscled power, his boots dangling six inches above the gravel. The sentinels part for her, for Shandris, and then flow like water to close the path behind them. 

She can see her reflection in his eyes, teeth on full display and white as the luminous fire in her eyes as she bites out with force, "What have you _done_?"

Fear is the scent that clouds the area now. Not the quel'dorei omega. The kaldorei one whose hands are wrapping futiley around her wrist, his blood trickling down the back of his skull where it has cracked upon the stone. "My Queen-" he all but raspes out, breaks off just as suddenly when her hand closes, cuts off his breath as simply as if it were anything. 

"You may as well have lit a signal fire and shown all of Silvermoon to our forward camp," Tyrande seethes, distantly aware at the scent of urine that he has pissed himself. Good. Let him know his place, beneath the lowest of the low, to be ground beneath her heel. "For what. Alphas kept in the encampment with a heat-addled enemy omega. Your incompetence knows no bounds."

He makes a harsh, croaking sound like speech, and his feet kick, one jerking as if of its own volition against the stone. She is dimly aware, in the space between her instincts and all that fury, that a vessel has broken in his eye to stain the sclera red, that the deep shade of aubergine overtaking his countenance is wholly unnatural. It strikes her, as Shandris clears a throat just behind her, that she may have torn his out if the others were not present. 

When her hand releases from around his neck, he lands heavily in the piss-soaked gravel, ears drawn back and spittle in his beard as he hacks and wheezes for a breath and finds little succor.

She can hear footsteps in the gravel, does not need to turn to know that Myllaen stands there, a war-glaive on one shoulder. "Your orders, General?"

Shandris looks to her adoptive mother as if weighing something, then instructs, "Collect those who would not march to Seradane. Take an ear - that their shame may be seen in any shape, and march them there. No stops. No rest. They will prove their loyalty to the High Priestess, or be cut down on the road."

"Your will be done," Myllaen answers, then barks an order, the sentinels already on the move into the encampment.

And that leaves only Malfurion.

There is no pity left in her for him, Tyrande's lip curled to show prominent incisors and her posture all dominance as she instructs, "You will report to Darnassus by nightfall. You will take no sustenance nor rest. You will submit yourself to the authority of the Sisters, and should I hear my instructions were not followed to the letter, this will be but a paltry lesson before I have finished with you."

"M-" 

He does not even so much as breathe a syllable before she cuts him off.

"No." With the swivel of an ear toward Shandris, she instructs only, "Take an ear, that he bear the punishment he has inflicted upon his men. Their shame is his own."

Jealousy and fear burn both and bright in his eyes, and she does not look away until he averts them, her will complete as she turns toward the mouth of the cave and descends into darkness. It could almost feel welcoming, were it not for the cloying scent of omega everywhere, as if it bled from the damp rocks. 

Water trickles from somewhere overhead, makes stagnant pools underfoot to be avoided by her boots, the stone slick with algae. And it takes time to follow the signs left by the sentinels, which path to follow into the cavern to avoid the dead-ends, the little mis-steps that would lead nowhere or to further danger. It takes time because Shandris had them shelter their prisoner as deep as the cave descends, beyond a narrow gap where she can see the flicker of...

Finally, ah. Torchlight ahead.

The bottle-neck cavern was a sensible choice, drier than much of the area, defensible in the event that they were rushed. And it seems comfortably enough appointed for a makeshift prison, the two sentinels to either side of the entrance shifting aside to allow her passage. They would have sensed her approach, make way.

It comes as no surprise that everyone would have scented her approach, bristling with fury as she is.

What comes as a surprise as she steps into the illuminated cavern, is the sheer fucking audacity. The way the captive - and that has to be Windrunner - pulls her arm from another ranger's grasp and approaches her with a slow, easy saunter, as if she were merely another kind of game to be felled. As bold as anything, smoke-grey eyes upon her, flecks of amber shining in them as they rove from her boots up to her own and the quel'dorei sweeps a tongue over her teeth as if in thought.

Lifts a chin as if having taken her measure and observes in a husky, affected cadence, "If it isn't the glory of Darnassus."

It must be. Hells. The resemblance to the Thalassian Queen is striking, and there is no silver to the hair. The middle one, then.

"Sylvanas."

And that is no stroke of luck for Darnassus so much as it is fox in the snare, about to wreak havoc in the warrens. 

She's pretty. Very pretty, in a way that all but threatens to immolate the remnants of nightroyal from the Darnassian Queen's blood and make a mistake of both of them. All that tension and easy confidence, the arrogance. The way that those smoke-grey eyes look at her undaunted, flecks of amber stricken in them, to remind her of embers cast from wildfire. A complexion of cream and gold, and a lithe musculature. All that flaxen hair, pale as the first hint of dawn, plastered to the side of a slender neck with sweat and carrying...

No.

Tyrande watches a bead of sweat trickle down the side of the quel'dorei's neck, gather in the hollow of her throat. She smells like sunlight now, hot and clear in the heart of summer. It is a clean scent beneath the others, one she thinks would be entirely pleasant even without the heat-scent bleeding through. Summer and sex, the collar of the quel'dorei's tunic damp with sweat despite the damp chill of a Lordaeron spring.

It has to be agony.

It smells divine.

"And what is the Ranger-General doing in my custody?" Tyrande inquires in a low growl, craning her head subtly to the side in inspection. As if it were obvious. As if she were not subtly entranced by the way the pulse in the side of a slender neck jumps in tandem with her voice. 

Perhaps leaning forward was a mistake, because Sylvanas tilts in then, draws a breath from the side of her neck - not near enough to touch, but close enough to feel the exhalation on her skin when the high elf answers, "Hunting." A slow sweep of tongue over teeth, smoke-grey eyes lifting from her throat to her gaze before Sylvanas announces with a certain relish, "You smell like oud."

It seems impossible that it could take her like this, this one inopportune time in all her fourteen thousand years. But in between those words, the intrusive thought burns - _You would smell like oud, if I took you to bed_. In three strides, Tyrande has backed the other elf into the side of the cavern, an archer's shoulders pressed there as she, much taller, leans over Sylvanas with a forearm braced to the rocks overhead. _There is not enough nightroyal in all of Darnassus for this_ , she thinks, seeing the rim of colour around smoke-grey eyes diminish at her proximity. 

"Hunting _what_?" Tyrande bares her teeth. It is much worse this close, with the archer’s slender hand splayed on her bare abdomen as if to maintain a scarce amount of distance. It feels like a white-hot iron. Her gaze slips down between them, dragging back up to settle on the twitch to the corner of Sylvanas’s lips, a hint of a smirk. She leans closer, bites out with the weight of a threat, “Did I give you permission to touch me?”

“Did I-” 

The sharpness to that tone tells her everything she needs to know - that she doesn’t want, or even need to hear the rest of it to know how insubordinate it will be. None of her army would speak with her so glibly. She will not tolerate it from a captive, particularly an impertinent omega. Swift as a hunting saber, she seizes the high elf by the jaw and affixes her to the stone, sees the way the ears tilt back, the smoke-grey eyes widen subtly. For a moment, they remain docile and she has to bite back the thrill of that, the internal voice that tells her - _That’s a good omega_. 

But then they narrow behind honeyed lashes, a hint of teeth seen when those lips part. The fox in its snare, waiting to claim a digit. She turns her head at the scrape of a boot on stone, reverberates a low warning in her chest when she sees the other ranger has stood - a rough-hewn chunk of rock held in their hand, as if they intended to strike her down if warranted. The loyalty that Windrunner instills is admirable, that they would gladly face death for her - even in the heart of the kaldorei forward camp.

The sharp sensation of metal against her bare stomach makes the muscle there tense, diverts her attention back to Sylvanas in an instant. How had she forgotten that Shandris _armed her_? She knows, somewhere beneath the scent of woodsmoke and honeysuckle _why_ , dislikes the answer, because her own nature has left her vulnerable in ways it should not. That the blade is of kaldorei make, Feathermoon’s own, is only salt in the wound. The razored tip rests just above her navel, sharp enough that a sudden breath may nick the skin. When it does, if only just, a bead of crimson wells up, trickles down to her waistband to melt into the white fabric. She is intimately aware in that moment that Sylvanas could gut her like a hind well before any of her sentinels could reach them.

She is aware that she is impossibly hard, and that is much, much _worse_. Still, it is impressive. To keep one’s wits about them even in the throes of instinct. Sylvanas is doing much better than she is, Tyrande muses bitterly, the pressure in her hips sharpening when the ranger’s thumb brushes over the place another bead of blood is welling, looks up at her with an arched brow.

“I armed you so that you could defend yourself,” Shandris’s voice is a relief, cuts across the cavern as her daughter makes her presence known. It is sufficient, in the very least, to make Sylvanas’s other ranger release the stone, which clatters to the ground with the dull sound of rock on rock. Her ear twitches subtly as she hears them move back to their seat on an outcropping, as if this solved everything sufficiently enough. Shandris has that effect. Instills some manner of trust in so short a time.

“I am defending myself,” Sylvanas replies, but that voice is fraying around its edges. It hasn’t escaped her notice that the archer is toying with her now, tracing the tip of the blade between her tensed muscles, lingering just so in the dips and valleys between them. It could almost be sensual, almost is, if it weren’t them. If it weren’t like this - the captor and captive shifting their roles. Glancing down between them as the knife slips lower, the high elf pauses at the belt buckle, head atilt as she assumes a knowing smile and taunts softly, as if it were just between them, “Or am I hunting big game, Whisperwind?”

“Sylvanas.” And this time it is the ranger across the cavern, their voice cool and direct. As if conscious of the invisible line the other is in danger of toying with, all the implications of it. Of Tyrande’s own, rapidly dwindling resolve.

But the words are enough - draw the Ranger-General from the subject of her interest, albeit slowly. The tip of the knife removes itself from where it rests against her skin, making her shudder involuntarily, and becomes a pommel resting there instead. _Offered up for her to take_. The ranger’s touch lingers as she takes the blade, brushes against her knuckles For another long moment as she looks up, smoke-grey eyes meet starfire-white, and perhaps that would be enough. Perhaps it would all go straight to hell again if Shandris doesn’t clear her throat, loudly this time.

Forearm still braced to the cavern wall, Tyrande nonetheless eases up, allowing the high elf to slip beneath her arm and put a much-needed distance between them. _You would think that would make it easier. It does not_. She remains where she is, not willing to turn back toward them fully until her indiscretion is at least...less prominent, would be nice.

Glancing over her shoulder, she watches Sylvanas trying to breathe through her teeth, draw no more of her scent. _At least it is not solely me, then_ , she thinks with a small fragment of satisfaction.

“I thought I was going to have to settle for goading Malfurion,” Sylvanas asserts in a drawl, glancing back toward her in like kind - as if a moth seeking a flame.

They would both immolate. She is certain of it. There would be nothing but scorched earth to remain. Her control has never been this tenuous. Rolling another bit of nightroyal between her fingers, twice the amount she should, she settles it between her teeth - certain that all of them have noticed. 

“It would have been better if you did,” Tyrande asserts bitterly, grinding the resinous herbs between her teeth to increase their potency. The taste is overpowering, but at least it is no longer woodsmoke and honeysuckle. At least it is an anchor for her, relieves some of the pressure built beneath her hips.

A low sound of amusement from Sylvanas for that, then a knowing admission of, “You sound as disappointed as I feel.” But then smoke-grey eyes shift toward the other ranger, “Velonara. Do you suppose Alleria will be thankful for Darnassus’s _obvious_ mishandling of its prisoners?”

Velonara is about to answer, it seems.

But the Darnassian Queen does not provide an opportunity, asserting flatly, “Malfurion’s actions are no reflection of _Darnassus_. They are his alone, and he has borne the consequences of them.”

It doesn’t escape her notice that those smoke-grey eyes have gone hooded, linger on her arms for a long moment before Sylvanas remarks lightly, “I’m sure he has. You certainly are… _something_.”

“Sylvanas,” Velonara’s warning is softer this time, but more displeased.

“Smart enough to know that you aren’t here without a reason,” Tyrande’s voice is resonant, low with its own displeasure as she pushes away from the wall, turns to stalk toward them. Shandris sweeps a critical look over her, and she pretends not to notice, instead checking the hilt of the dagger as if to ensure it is still on her person.

“You think I planned this?” Sylvanas laughs aloud at that, looks delighted by the mere notion even like this. Even sweating through her tunic in the bottom of a damp cave in the Hinterlands. Shaking her head, the high elf assures with a coy smile, “I have plans, yes. But not ones that required me to be in this state. Do you think me mad, _Tyrande_?”

“Certainly not,” she says with a dismissive gesture, rolling her shoulders and feeling a vertebrae pop. “But this situation is well beyond your control now.” With the lift of her chin toward the cavern’s opening, “Half the valley has their hackles up because of you.”

“Because of _me_? Because of Malfurion, you mean.” Sylvanas drawls with an arched brow, movements languid as the high elf starts to circle her. “ _Your_ man’s incompetence is why we are in this predicament, but you needn’t worry. I’m in control. I have a handle on my nature.”

Star-white, her gaze lingers on the sweat-dampened collar, the flaxen hair stuck at the side of a slender neck, the sheen to the cream and gold complexion before she observes drily, “You’re sweating like a Kul Tiran in the heart of Nazmir. I doubt you’re in a state to handle anything.”

Smoke-grey eyes meet hers directly, a lip curling up to reveal a hint of teeth. There’s that famed Windrunner arrogance. “I handled you, didn’t I? Would you be more comfortable if I were begging for it?” But it shifts, mercurial as it melds into something else. The corner of those lips curls up knowingly, as if in satisfaction at her silence, “You would. Noted.”

She would. She would love that in a way she would not be able to rein in, she thinks as her ears shift back and up, expression carved from stone to keep it from revealing too much. She would love the release from this, from the primeval part of her mind that is howling to have Windrunner under her, over her, put up against the cavern wall and thoroughly f- 

“Shandris,” it is succinct, the one word she is able to throw out like a lifeline. If Shandris were not present, she has little doubt her resolve would have broken already, ever one of her instincts pacing like a sabercat beneath the thin veneer of numbness provided by the nightroyal. It isn’t enough. It should be.

They need to move. Now, if not ten minutes ago.

“Right. We’re on the move,” Shandris announces matter-of-factly as if reading the silent desperation in the line of her shoulders, in the cant of her ears. She could swear that a soft _thank fuck for that_ comes from Velonara, the other ranger rising to dust off her breeches and looking relieved at the prospect of not constantly having to be at the cusp of pulling Windrunner off her.

“And where are we off to?” Sylvanas asks lowly, smoke-grey eyes all cunning and deception as she attempts to read the sudden shift in the room. Calculating something unforeseen.

She seizes onto it, star-white eyes narrowing suddenly in the dark as it all starts to coalesce into one sharp and clarient thought within her skull. All of this posturing, all the subtle jabs, and the not-so-subtle ones, have all been with purpose. Another move in their proverbial game, and she but a pawn shifted onto the board when Malfurion was swept off it, necessitating another approach.

It feels as if she were reading the archer like an open scroll for the very first time, her words even and resonant as Tyrande states, “You know where already. I can’t take you further inland. Or are you simply stalling for more of my time?”

Smoke-grey eyes widen only subtly at that, regard her with a begrudging respect. There it is, like an arrow nocked on the bowstring. They hood again almost instantly, the corner of the high elf’s lips curling ever-so-faintly in response to confirm her suspicions.

With two swift strides, Tyrande all but prowls over to her, not enjoying how the high elf doesn’t shrink at her approach, but instead lifts her chin as if in challenge of her. Yoking Sylvanas up by a fistful of fabric between the shoulders, she leans in dangerously close in a bid for dominance, seethes, “You can move, or I can move you, Windrunner. Your choice entirely.”

Sylvanas sweeps another knowing look over her, lingering beneath her belt before retorting, “Are you up to the task?”

She is. Thank Elune for what little solace the nightroyal has given her, not enough for this, but only just sufficient to allow her to pull herself back from the brink. It should be doing more, but she is thankful for what she receives at the moment. Drawing up until the high elf’s booted toes only just touch the floor, a display of well-muscled strength, Tyrande all but holds her by the scruff like a naughty nightsaber cub, forcing her to walk out into the tunnels and toward the camp above ground. 

“Worried what might happen if we stay here?” Sylvanas goads beneath her breath, only just audible, as if Velonara may hear. “That I might escape off into the chaos? Or just that when it comes down to it, it might not be you?”

The sound that she makes in response is deep and possessive, surprises even her, but her step doesn’t falter. Her ears flick back, and she does not look at Sylvanas as the archer breathes out further, as if in satisfaction for her success, “Really now?”

The sound is, however, noticed by the other ranger, who glances back at them with wine-coloured eyes as she starts to speak, but then cuts off suddenly. Pressing her lips into a thin line for a moment, Velonara instead addresses Shandris, “It’s not even worth it, is it?”

“Not particularly.” Shandris answers with certainty. “We could gag her, but I don’t think that would help.”

“It probably wouldn’t,” Velonara confirms with seeming annoyance for the whole of the situation, quickening her pace.

Shandris almost, almost cracks a smile at that, but schools her countenance at noticing Tyrande’s observance of it.

“We won’t need restraints,” Tyrande observes lowly, well aware of how dark her voice has become, the possessive current that threads dangerously through it. All the more conscious of the gooseflesh that has broken out along the high elf’s skin in response, and that almost makes her emit a low growl again. 

It’s making her captive all the more impertinent, she realizes as the high elf seems to consider bracing against the wall. Sylvanas notices her noticing, but that smirk only just widens before the archer purposefully digs her heels in in an attempt to halt their progress, “High praise from the Darnassian Queen. You could certainly try.”

She has tangled with far more dangerous things than a Windrunner omega, she thinks with narrowed eyes as, in a quick exchange of grappling hands, she quite simply throws the high elf over her shoulder to walk the remainder of the way out without obstruction. It hasn’t escaped her notice that Sylvanas didn’t put up _that much_ of a fight, or that both Shandris and Velonara look deeply disquieted by the move.

Nor, to her ever-increasing displeasure, that there are still a few of Malfurion’s stragglers lingering around the ring of sentinels, Myllaen even now in the process of slicing the ear from one of them, then kicking him shoulder-first into the mud.

“You are _such_ a problem,” Tyrande breathes without meaning to.

Sylvanas’s fingers catch on her opposite pauldron as the high elf pulls herself up, draping across her shoulders with a wild grace, and murmuring hotly into her ear, “You haven’t seen anything yet.”

The hint of teeth against the shell of her ear almost unmakes her resolve, the spill of dawn-gold hair down the front of her breastplate, smelling of honeysuckle and woodsmoke, a hint of leather in all the worst ways. The nightroyal cannot be working as intended. _Cannot be_. She feels her ears shift back against her skull, and she is about to say something in response that she decidedly _should not_ , but as she watches, the alpha outside the circle pricks his remaining ear in their direction. 

A lowly guttural, aggressive sound rumbles from her chest and deepens as she catches his scent on the wind, Tyrande’s teeth bared and incisors on prominent display as she straightens to her full height in obvious threat, as if daring him to infringe upon the glaive-wall. _This is **mine**_ , the whole of her is snarling without ever using words to say it with. 

A fingertip traces along the side of her neck and her ear twitches, star-white gaze cast askance as Sylvanas’s scent, or perhaps the touch, soothes her ire for the moment at least. As if impressed, the smoothness of her voice noticeably worn down now, the high elf purrs into her ear, “Good alpha.”

This cannot continue, but she wants it to, the whole of her attention focused on the elegant features so close to hers - the smoke-grey eyes that don’t look away.

She hears Velonara dimly, at the periphery of her senses, intone blithely, “You could fetch a bucket of water for them.”

And manages, if only just, to put her down into Ash’alah’s saddle instead of on her back, which feels like it took all the resolve of climbing Mount Hyjal with her bare hands. 

“You’re up front. Don’t touch the reins,” Tyrande instructs lowly, fastening the other’s bow onto the back of her sabrecat and trying to ignore the white-knuckled grip the high elf has on the front of the saddle. Those ears swivel as if to track her movements, keep aware of where she is.

Shandris opens her mouth, then snaps it shut with a click of the teeth.

“I suppose I’m riding with Shandris, then?” Velonara asks, her smooth cadence laced with concern as she looks toward her indisposed commander.

“First name basis, really?” Shandris replies with a perk of the ears, but swiftly addresses her instead. “Do you think that’s…”

Her ears shift back possessively, the last of the supplies secured before mounting up. The saddle creaks beneath their weight, and she could swear Sylvanas’s knuckles go whiter on the top of it.

“Right.” Shandris does not look convinced in any fashion that this is a stellar idea, but abandons the argument to swing up onto her own nightsaber as well. Nodding toward Velonara, her daughter offers an arm, “Up on the saber, then.”

Velonara’s ascent is more graceful, the high elf settling easily behind Shandris without preamble.

Pale blue eyes lock with hers for one last instant as Shandris wheels her nightsaber in a circle, waiting until seemingly certain of her composure to spur the great cat onward with a shout, “We’ll lead!”

And then they are off into the forest below.

* * *

Sylvanas Windrunner aches in every part of her person, even here. Heat runs rampant beneath her skin, complexion glimmering with a sheen of sweat, and she can feel another bead of it trickle between her lean shoulder-blades, disappear into the fabric of her already soaked tunic. 

She wishes she had her armour still, though it wouldn’t do much to help. Wonders, completely over-stimulated by the proximity of the alpha behind her in the saddle, the creak of leather beneath them, and the rush of leaves all around as the nightsaber surges through the woodland, if Tyrande knew how dreadful an idea this was well before they mounted the great cat and rode for the coast. Probably, if the gusts of warm air against the back of her neck are any indication. Undoubtedly, she realizes as Tyrande shifts in the saddle, pressed back in it as far as she can, but still managing to prod her in the back of the hip.

This is the worst plan. Worse than the cave. Worse than her own, ill-fated idea to place herself into Darnassian custody, a calculated move that she had _thought_ necessary to draw attention away to her in the forward camp, and away from her ranger’s movements as they set upon Seradane. It should have been easy for her to slip away afterwards, with none the wiser until both she and Velonara were far abroad. But then, her best-laid plan had not included her family amulet being dashed upon the stones in another omega’s fit of futile rage for his lost supplies.

She bristles slightly at the memory. There will be a score to settle with that one later. 

“Stop moving,” Tyrande all but snarls softly near her ear, drawing her back from her thoughts. The nightsaber leaps over a fallen log, jostling them back together. The friction is unbearable. She _knows_ already, certainly isn’t _trying to_ , and it’s all she can do not to scream. The sound of that resonant voice against her skin is unbearable, raises the hair on the back of her neck and sends a fresh current of heat to pool between her legs.

 _Her resolve has always been stellar, but is wavering_ , she realizes. _It would be, after almost three days._

“I’m not moving,” Sylvanas hears herself snap back regardless, her fingernails biting into the front of the saddle for better purchase. She’s unbearably warm, was _well_ before she had seven feet of tall, well-endowed Darnassian alpha all but mounted up against her in the saddle. A saddle which is decidedly _not_ built to accommodate two, which is doing nothing to help either. “You could have just let me ride behind you.”

“No.” It is said with finality, Tyrande readjusting behind her in an infuriating way that brings the kaldorei’s strong thighs flush around hers. As the taller woman ducks beneath a branch, one she doesn’t need to accommodate for, it presses her up against her back again. “You won’t mind your hands.”

“Is _that_ what you’ve been doing this whole time?” Sylvanas asks with incredulity, half-turning to look back. Star-white eyes meet hers briefly, but avert as if unable to hold them. She allows her cadence to drop an octave, “Thinking about all the things I could do to you with my hands?”

Tyrande _definitely_ won’t make eye contact with her now, those stoic features wholly focused ahead, on the unmarked path ahead of them as if it may offer some sort of solution to this problem.

And it’s not a kind thought. She shouldn’t do it, but the _fucking thing_ has been poking her in the back of the hip the whole time, so why not? It should be easy to get a rise out of Tyrande. _Ha. A rise_. Sylvanas amuses herself sometimes, she muses, even as she releases her hold on the saddle with one hand, skims her palm up the inside of the kaldorei’s thigh and feels it tense beneath her touch. It isn’t difficult to find with the way it’s been prodding into her, or how it’s tented up the embroidered fabric of the other’s loose, Darnassian-style trousers.

“I don’t have to be minding my hands up here, either.” Sylvanas makes a point of reinforcing that statement by sliding the whole of her palm around the head of the Darnassian’s cock, her smoke-grey eyes falling half-lid with satisfaction. It throbs in her hand as she attempts to circle her fingers around it, only just able to. _Belore, that’s massive. And it’s just the head of it_. The implications of that are _staggering_. She slides her fingers lower, the looseness of the fabric allowing her to curl her hand around the shaft and feeling it pulse against her palm instead. 

A hand wraps in the reins so tightly that the leather leaves an imprint around lavender knuckles, and Tyrande braces it against the front of the saddle, the kaldorei’s powerful frame all but bent over her now, possessive, unhinged. She wonders when the nightsaber had slowed all but to a stop, when they reached the treelines. Loses all comprehension of that when Tyrande starts to speak, only to cut off sharply in the midst of a hard thrust into her hand, as if overwhelmed at feeling more of it.

“Get your hand off my c-” Given the way those hips buck into hers from behind again, the spot of dampness in that white fabric, the kaldorei isn’t faring any better than she is. She can smell the herbs on Tyrande’s breath, all that nightroyal that hasn’t done a damned thing, like citrus and pine resin.

If it weren’t for the impetus behind their ride through the forest, she suspects she’d be on her stomach in the moss and leaves already. Is tempted to be, biting her lower lip and trying to withhold a moan when Tyrande’s hips rock into hers from behind again. 

She rolls back into them with an excruciating slowness, more practiced at this than she isn’t despite a few hundred years worth of a dry spell. “ _Belore_ ,” she breathes the word out like an oath as she strokes downward and feels the pronounced swell of a knot already forming, not able to wrap her hand around it. “Why did it have to be you instead of Malfurion? Other omegas are so. Easy.”

“You’re not exactly easy,” Tyrande is all but panting against the back of her neck already, hot gusts of breath that stir her damp hair. “What would you have done?

An alpha all but still save for the breathing now. Well. Breathing and the occasional twitch of her cock. Still, it comes as a surprise when the kaldorei turns her head into the side of her neck, as if greedy for her scent, and draws in deeply of it. She’d forgotten how much she liked that. Entirely too much.

Sylvanas clenches around nothing when the kaldorei noses at her pulsepoint and emits a deep rumble as if pleased. It sends an ache deep inside her, a sensation of emptiness that she had almost forgotten the sheer madness of. Her smoke-grey eyes settle on the hand braced against the saddle as a thousand ideas race through her mind, all of how to put it to better use, and she only just manages to husk, “Slit his throat and left him for the gryphons.”

A louder rumble escapes Tyrande behind her, thundering from the chest directly into her shoulderblades and then shooting straight to her clit like a marksman’s arrow, where it pulses in time with her heart, sending little shocks of painful pleasure through her with every shift in the saddle. She feels a hot gust of breath against her throat, the sharp edge of teeth at the pulsepoint but never breaking the skin. She doesn’t know what’s uttered against it in Darnassian, but she suspects it isn’t polite from the way those hips rock into hers hard, once.

“ _Fuck me_.” Sylvanas swears aloud, bearing down wickedly on the kaldorei’s shaft with her hand.

“Is that what you want?” And Tyrande’s voice is all alpha now, deeper and resonant in a way that she can feel inside of her. But at least that lavender hand is unravelling from the reins, splays across Sylvanas’s bare midriff instead, pressing her back even as that powerful frame rocks forward into her.

 _Yes_. She shudders at the question, her head tilting to the side to reveal more of her neck for the alpha to scent. Her hands are strong, more than capable, subtly calloused from the use of a war-glaive. She wants them. Sylvanas allows her body to go languid, pliant back into the kaldorei’s own, if only for an instant, and that’s enough. 

“I should have gone to Darnassus ages ago,” Sylvanas starts to sigh, but the words melt into a moan halfway when that hand slides beneath the waistband of her breeches, where she’s wanted it all that time. 

And Tyrande has her now, is all that’s keeping her in the saddle as a claw-tipped finger glides through her slick folds, gathering the wetness there and making sparks of the edges of her vision. The alpha’s voice rumbles against her throat, “You would have driven all of Darnassus mad.”

“Am I driving you mad?” Sylvanas allows her head to fall back against the kaldorei’s broad shoulder with the question, a low cry in the back of her throat unbidden as that touch teases, threatens to slide inside her, where she needs it the most, but never does.

“Yes.” That resonant voice admits honestly against the slender curve of her throat. Tyrande means to ruin her. Another buck of those _fucking hips_ against hers is matched by the stroke of a touch through the wetness between her thighs, and the kaldorei sets a rhythm to it, every thrust into her hand matched by a caress to her sensitive clit.

She’s a thousand times certain that she’s going to go mad as well. Is mad. Spits out a string of words in Thalassian that would make the entire army and half the navy blush. Turning her head to press a sharp nip to the line of the kaldorei’s jaw and feeling the knot in her hand _throb_ for it, Sylvanas promises huskily, “I can do better.”

She slides her hand up with practise until she finds a damp place in the embroidered fabric of those Darnassian trousers, cupping her hand around the head of Tyrande’s cock as she traps it between the other’s well-muscled thigh and her own palm. The kaldorei attempts to thrust between them at that, but she doesn’t allow it, instead pressing her thumb down and rubbing the moisture gathered there in an agonizing circle beneath the cloth.

There’s little doubt to how good it must feel, particularly when Tyrande makes a harsh open-mouthed sound against the nape of her neck - not quite a hoarse cry but almost a snarl, the kaldorei only just managing not to spill over in her hand. Selfishly, she almost wants her to, if only to see how much it will be. If only with the promise to have it spill inside her later, but her thoughts shatter in an instant; because it couldn’t possibly feel as good as it does when the kaldorei’s middle two fingers sink into her to the first knuckle.

And now she’s grinding into the heel of that hand gladly to match the tempo the taller woman is setting, repaid in full when the pads of the kaldorei’s fingers curl inside her in the best possible place, slide almost entirely out to tease at her once more, and then press back in. She didn’t think it was possible for Tyrande to get harder, but the night elf manages upon slipping a third finger into her, mouth open to utter a low groan against the back of her neck when she clenches hard around them and her breath hitches.

Neither of them are far now, not with the way that grasp goes hard and possessive. Not after three days of warring against herself for control. Not after all her goading down in the cavern, now in the saddle flush to her back. Tyrande smells like _oud_ , of earth and wood, leather and spices she doesn’t have a name for. Of a hint of citrus where the hot rush of the other’s breath rushes over her skin, for all the good the nightroyal did either of them. And when that mouth closes against the place the pulse hammers in her throat, it burns, sucks a dark mark against the skin before doing it again just a bit lower, over and over until reaching the juncture of her neck and shoulder. 

It’s then that she can tell how badly the kaldorei wants to claim her, written in the way those thrusts have gone erratic at her back, shudder and halt. There are going to be bruises on her ass in the morning from how hard those hips are rutting into the back of hers, and she’s certain by now, without a shadow of a doubt, that if Tyrande could put her over and mount her in the saddle, she’d be bound for Darnassus by morning. And that’s dangerous. So dangerous, but nothing she’s unprepared for.

Sylvanas could give a fuck so long as she doesn’t _stop_ , reaching up behind her to tangle in that spruce-coloured hair and keep the kaldorei close, using that hold as an anchor as she rides Tyrande’s fingers in the saddle until she’s trembling, on the cusp of falling apart herself. And then her other hand slips down further, curling back around the thick knot at the base of the kaldorei’s cock and massaging into it with a dexterous touch. 

Dimly aware that those lips are brushing her skin now, Tyrande uttering something low and fervent into the side of her neck in a voice like dark velvet, reverent as a prayer, Sylvanas cannot understand the meaning of it. Instead, she rallies her unwavering resolve to slip a hand beneath the crux of the kaldorei’s jaw, forcing it up from her neck in the same instant that her other hand closes tightly around that throbbing knot, bearing down on it in all the best ways. Just as she does down onto the other woman’s fingers, a sudden rush of heat spreading between her hips to gather into one, perfect point of pleasure, just on the cusp of…

When she comes undone, it is sudden and with a flood of wet warmth into the palm of Tyrande Whisperwind’s hand, the heel of which grinds into her to encourage her riding out the aftershocks thereon. 

And as if in response to the way she pulses around the kaldorei’s fingers, the sudden heat, the slickness, Tyrande’s teeth snap together instead of around her skin with an audible _click_ as the alpha spills over with a low, resonant snarl near her ear. Sylvanas had considered that might be the case, but not how hard it is, or how that chest rumbles against her back as a thick kaldorei shaft throbs within her grasp. Or, quite honestly, how much it is, which is becoming abundantly clear as it soaks, hot and sticky through the embroidered fabric and onto her lower back.

She allows herself to be pliant in the wake of it, if only for a moment, her breath coming sharply and shakily as she relaxes back into the kaldorei’s taller frame, uncertain if this is wholly what she needed, but relieved that it has taken the worst of the edge off at the least. Still, the diminished heat at her core threatens to spark once more at the realization that Tyrande is yet knuckle-deep inside her, particularly when a thumb brushes her now over-sensitive clit to send little jolts of pleasure through her. 

The scent of oud and spices is overwhelmingly prevalent, makes her wonder with a thrill if the kaldorei is in danger of slipping into rut as a soft shiver of a growl emanates from behind her. Yes, would be her best estimation given that the Darnassian hasn’t released her yet, continuing to tease her all the while steering the nightsaber through the grass. The pheromones and the gentle touch are pleasant, soothe her as the fog seems to lift from her bones. It fades with time, a low sigh escaping her at the loss of fullness when the taller woman’s fingers slip out of her, though Tyrande’s arm slides around her waist possessively in its stead.

Her ears twitch at the sound of water thundering on the rocks, smoke-grey eyes sweeping through the meadow to drink in the iridescent mist coming off the falls, filling the valley with a spray of soft, sunlit colours. She doesn’t know when they broached the treeline, much less found the head of the river above Agol’watha, but it is decidedly the opposite of the direction that they had intended to travel. There is an old ranger outpost behind the falls that should provide enough shelter for the eve, she supposes. They’ll not make the coast this evening, and the water should scour away the bulk of her scent, make it difficult to follow.

Sylvanas is about to say as much, offer up that secret, but it would seem her companion reaches the same conclusion in similar time, at least as regards to the river. Directing the nightsaber into the shallows until the cool water is lapping at their thighs and mist alights in little droplets in their hair, Tyrande gives her a gentle shove into the water before slipping from Ash’alah’s back.

The kaldorei submerges over her head, remains beneath the current for several seconds as if to clear her head, before rising back from it. Water sluices down over them from one of the smaller falls as Tyrande draws a touch nearer, then looks at her with an unreadable expression and remains instead at the deepest point, as if the frigid current will help regain some measure of that steely resolve.

The best-laid plans, shattered in the span of hours.

Sylvanas tilts her head back, floating upon the water in the sunlight, and simply laughs.


End file.
